Introduction: This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on “Pervasive Intelligent Technologies for Health”. Background: Effective nonverbal communication between patients and clinicians fosters both the delivery of empathic patient-centered care and positive patient outcomes. Although nonverbal skill training is a recognized need, few efforts to enhance patie...

The papers in this special issue on communication in health care can be summarized in one easy and powerful message: communication is the royal pathway to patient-centered medicine. Approached from different angles, the linkage between communication and patient-centered medicine is the common theme that is covered by all authors. Underlying are two distinct assumptions: the first is, that patie...

The need for physicians to have patient-centered communication skills is reflected in the educational objectives of numerous medical schools' curricula and in the competencies required by groups such as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. An innovative method for teaching communications skills has been developed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine as part of i...

Objective: Gynaecologic surgery in addition to the common concerns to all surgical procedures, involves psychological and emotional issues. Anxiety is a common outcome. Studies indicate that systematic preoperative information contributes to decreased levels of anxiety and to a faster postoperative recovery, with no complications. In the present clinical study we evaluated the impact of systema...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to show that physician communication style of breaking bad news affects how the physician is perceived, how satisfied recipients of bad news are with the consultation, and how they feel after the consultation. METHOD Female participants (students, N=159) were asked to put themselves in the shoes of a patient receiving the bad news of a breast cancer diagno...

OBJECTIVES To review the medical, ethical, and legal basis of the doctrine of informed consent for surgery and its complications, particularly for an incapacitated patient who requires a surrogate decision maker; to discuss the elasticity of the consent doctrine, whether surgical consent encompasses consent for surgical complications, and emphasize the importance of communication and shared dec...